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itwbennett writes "East Japan entered its fifth day of power rationing on Friday, with no end to the planned blackouts in sight. The local electrical utility can't make up the shortfall by importing power from another region, though, because Japan lacks a national power grid, a consequence of a decision made in the late 1800s."

If the USS Ronald Reagan had a couple Mighty Pumps in its inventory, these could be attached to the catapult steam lines. An electrical generator could be attached to the pump's drive shaft, generating power. Then they'd just run a cable to the shore to power the cities affected by the disaster.

The USS Enterprise [sendtheenterprise.org] has 310 megawatts of thermal power. I don't know how much of this could be sent to the catapult lines... Nimitz-class carriers [wikipedia.org] have 2 reactors instead of 8, and generate ~190 MW of thermal power.

There is some historical legacy for using an aircraft carrier to power a city:

... Each of Lexington’s four electrical generators could produce 35,200 kilowatts. All together, the generators were powerful enough to fulfill the electricity requirements of a decent sized city. And, for 30 days that is exactly what she did....

Lots of people have found my site this week (/. post on Sunday [slashdot.org], google, etc), and the link about the MYT engine was one of the more-commonly followed links. This page has better information about the MYT pump/engine:

The MYT [Massive Yet Tiny] Engine as a pump/compressor purportedly exceeds existing pumps/compressors in providing massive pressure, volume, and flow -- all in one unit. This attribute makes it ideal for geothermal energy, among many other such applications.

The reactors at Fukushima generate over 3,000MW of power, and that's not the only plant that's offline. Maybe if you had 10 aircraft carriers, 3GW of generators and these magic MYT Engines (or at least conventional turbines) *and* some place to plug them in that would be a viable solution. Oh, and the vast majority of an aircraft carrier's steam output goes to the turbines that drive the props - how will you get that steam up above the water line to your generators? Maybe you can just jack up the back of the carrier out of the water and connect the generators to the prop shafts. Then you "only" need to find a generator that runs at prop shaft speed or a gearbox to convert the speed.

It took most of a week to get new backup generators to those power plants. Shouldn't the Navy have some portable power plants, to help with disaster response? I suppose these shouldn't all be attached to the large ships, as they wouldn't want to tie up the Ronald Reagan next to the leaking nuclear power plant...

The most compact nuclear power plants around (naval units used in submarines) weigh about 1000 tons. These use highly enriched uranium, so they would be seen as a security risk.Containerizing this unit would mean at least 50 40-ft containers (with each container at its maximum weight), you probably need more because most containers won't reach this density. That would give something like 80 MW. Considering that a 20-ft container can hold at least a 1-MW diesel generator with its fuel supply, having a containerized nuclear reactor would seem to hold little advantage over diesel gensets.

There's also the problem that you really want the reactor vessel and the primary coolant loop as one unit, since you can't easily disconnect these once the reactor has been active and has irradiated the primary loop.Now the reactor vessel alone is larger than a standard container. You'd end up with a very large and heavy undivisible central unit.

You'd be better off leaving the reactor on a ship and just running a cable ashore. For smaller power needs, existing containerized diesel gensets are a good solution.

Perhaps there's not enough juice to go around for all the coffee makers, discotheques, and big-screen televisions.

OTOH, I'm pretty sure that 300 MWp is plenty to power a few hospitals, food distribution areas, and some command/coordination centers. Probably have enough power left over to maybe keep some radios, and perhaps a light bulb or two going so that folks in shelters can get some light and news.

For real? How to get the steam above the waterline? You do realize this is high pressure steam (~1200 psi), and that traditional catapults use steam in the first place. Besides, steam rises!

Oh sorry, my bad, I guess they just need to open some hatches and let the steam waft out of the boilers to the surface.

I was under the impression that 300MW worth of high pressure steam would take a sizeable pipe (or pipes), and running that pipe from the reactor boiler to someplace where you could put a generator would require cutting holes in many decks of the aircraft carrier or cutting a hole in the side of the boat.

This article is from IndustrialInfo.com [industrialinfo.com]. Free registration is required for most articles, paid registration required for others. My company has a subscription. My company (a major turbine manufacturer) is also helping to bring the 20GW of lost generation back online. We are also frantically bringing mothballed hydro, coal, and other resources online since some of the coal plants were damaged in the earthquake. Even if you could hookup ships to the Japanese grid, it is a drop in the bucket.

Ye gods is that site full of errors and ignorance, the author of which knows roughly nothing about supercarriers...

Specific criticisms would be helpful.

There's really no way to provide specific criticisms - the idea is ludicrous from top to bottom.For one thing, you fail to realize those ships are taken out of service because they're worn out and because it would be too expensive to overhaul them and make them safe and reliable to continue operations. Not to mention the ongoing (and considerable) e

Anywhere you need to transmit power a long distance - you get less power loss over the distance. In Canada a decent portion of our power generation is from hydroelectric dams in the north - 1000 km from the main demands for that power. We have 450,000-volt DC lines [wikipedia.org] running that distance. Any tech that makes that transmission more efficient, or reduces maintenance costs at either end would be snapped up quickly.

The other beauty is standard entrenchment. Australia a land of 240V nominal power decided in the 80s to align with the European standard of 230V. In order to not break anything they simply redefined 240V +/- 5% to be 230V +10% -5%. End result is my wall currently measures 244V 20 years after our "switch" to 230V.

Hehe... electricity as a relatively early technological development (i.e. invented before international standards bodies were as well established as they are now) is a perfect example of what happens when each country (or in Japan's case, even separate regions within a country) is free to roll out whatever system they prefer. In a way, it's surprising that we didn't end up with more variation. Most countries are 50 or 60 Hz, ~110-120V or ~230-240V, but it could have ended up worse with places using all kin

The change from 60Hz BW to 59.94Hz color is a bit more complex than that. Wikipedia says:

"When a transmitter broadcasts an NTSC signal, it amplitude-modulates a radio-frequency carrier with the NTSC signal just described, while it frequency-modulates a carrier 4.5 MHz higher with the audio signal. If non-linear distortion happens to the broadcast signal, the 3.579545 MHz color carrier may beat with the sound carrier to produce a dot pattern on the screen. To make the resulting pattern less noticeable, desi

>>>TV's don't sync to the power line. They convert incoming power to DC then work from that.

That is so horribly wrong. "The NTSC field refresh frequency in the black-and-white system originally exactly matched the nominal 60 Hz frequency of alternating current power used in the United States. Matching the field refresh rate to the power source avoided intermodulation (also called beating), which produces rolling bars on the screen......

"Synchronization of the refresh rate to the power incidentally helped kinescope cameras record early live television broadcasts, as it was very simple to synchronize a film camera to capture one frame of video on each film frame by using the alternating current frequency to set the speed of the synchronous AC motor-drive camera.....

"The actual figure of 525 lines was chosen as a consequence of the limitations of the vacuum-tube-based technologies of the day. In early TV systems, a master voltage-controlled oscillator was run at twice the horizontal line frequency, and this frequency was divided down by the number of lines used (in this case 525) to give the field frequency (60 Hz in this case). This frequency was then compared with the 60 Hz power-line frequency and any discrepancy corrected by adjusting the frequency of the master oscillator." - wiki

Very interesting article. I had no idea that Japan was effectively split in half thanks to 50Hz and 60Hz power grids. So does every home that is hooked up to 50Hz have a converter to switch it to 60Hz or vice versa since some electronic devices are rather dependent on the AC frequency? What happens when somebody decides to move across the country from one power source to the other? Do you just throw out all your old clocks that relied on the AC frequency for its timing source and buy new ones?
I also wonder if the disaster unfolding there might encourage them to try to migrate the entire country to a single standard, whether 50 or 60. It has certainly demonstrated a major problem with their current infrastructure...

Other than poorly designed clocks, what other devices actually care about the power line frequency? My parents in Virginia have very bad 60Hz power, they have a few clocks that are often off by 10 minutes or more each way, so it's not a good idea to base your clock frequency source on the power line in the first place. Most devices not either don't care (light bulbs) or put their power through an AC/DC conversion step anyway. So what would really need to be thrown out if you switched from 50Hz to 60Hz stand

Other than poorly designed clocks, what other devices actually care about the power line frequency?

Motors. Big motors, like the kind you find in your furnace, A/C compressor, elevators, and other places. Nobody cares about the consumer electronics because all that stuff either auto-ranges or can be manually switched. But big industrial equipment is everywhere and lasts a long time.

The motors I deal with in my job (manufacturing automation) are all DC motors and stepper motors driven by controllers which are performing an AC/DC conversion, so this is only a problem with constant speed AC motors. But granted, climate control is a HUGE installed base.

When I worked in an oil warehouse, all of our portable pumps were AC. Granted, most of them had speed control modules because at full snort they would either a) make a gigantic splashing mess with light viscosity oil, or b) throw breakers like they were going out of style while pushing the high viscosity stuff.:)

Climate control (at least for commercial HVAC) is a relative non-issue as well. Every motor I've seen installed lately is happy at either frequency - for that matter, we put lots of them on variable-speed drives which varies the frequency and voltage all over the place. Only extremely old motors might have issues.

So all that really happens is the motor speeds up/down a bit (depending on who converts their system) which is handily fixed - if you even need to - as most large air handling equipment is belt-d

Other than poorly designed clocks, what other devices actually care about the power line frequency?

Actually, mains power should normally be a very good frequency source for a clock. Utilities periodically adjust the frequency such that the long term clock drift is near zero. From wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

Network operators will regulate the daily average frequency so that clocks stay within a few seconds of correct time. In practice the nominal frequency is raised or lowered by a specific percentage to maintain synchronization. Over the course of a day, the average frequency is maintained at the nominal value within a few hundred parts per million.

Other than poorly designed clocks, what other devices actually care about the power line frequency?

Poorly designed? In the UK, power line frequency is very tightly controlled and fluctuations are corrected for during the night, so clocks that were synchronous to the power were very accurate. The problem isn't the clocks, its the power generation. Also, sotting in my garage, I have an old turntable, with a synchronous motor. Again, any frequency error is far less than one's ability to distinguish from th

For kicks pick any 5 power bricks and look at the label. I bet most of them will say 100-240V, 50-60hz. Will work in most of the world if you have a simple plug adapter, no need for a voltage or frequency change.

Most modern built-in power converters and supplies can handle pretty much anything - if you look at the power brick for your computer, chances are it says "100-240V, 50-60Hz". It's expensive to run separate production lines, so companies have tried to make stuff as universal as possible.

Older things here in Japan often have a small switch at the back, marked "50/60". You set it according to where you live.

Most clocks don't use the AC frequency as a timing source. Plenty of older mains powered clocks do, you can often come across them in lecture theatres in older institutions. You can usually tell because the second hand will move continuously rather than ticking.

I wonder if this is how my school did it. In grade school we had rather simple looking analogue clocks that essentially mimicked the clock on the control panel for the PA system. If there was a power outage the clocks would stop, and when the power came back we would see them run quick to catch up.

Same with DST, if we got in early enough we would see the clocks run fast to spring 1 hour ahead or run really fast to "fall" 11 hours ahead. (Never ran backwards)

The 60Hz out of the wall socket is very accurate. Accurate to within a minute or so a month. They use something called a synchronous motor. It's only in the past 40 years that quartz crystal controlled clocks were even mass marketed.

"Single phase synchronous motors are available in small sizes for applications requiring precise timing such as time keeping, (clocks) and tape players. Though battery powered quartz regulated clocks are w

FTA: "Japan's electricity system got its start in 1883 with the founding of Tokyo Electric Light Co. Demand quickly grew and in 1895 the company bought electricity generation equipment from Germany's AEG. In west Japan the same evolution was taking place, and Osaka Electric Lamp imported equipment from General Electric."

Wait: I thought the free market solved all problems and never needed government intervention.

You seem to have a stunning amount of faith in government, including 1800's feudal Japan, to accurately plan for catastrophes 130 years in advance.

1890's Japan was very well post-feudal. Remember, it was only ten years after they bought the incompatible GE equipment (I should make a nasty comment here, since my family worked for Westinghouse) to where they defeating the Russians in 1905.

However east and west Japan were still relatively independent even in the 1890s. It wasn't really until after the Russo-Japanese war that the country really started to become just that, a unified country. Humans have this odd way of thinking about countries, namely that the government/political structures and geographical boundaries of countries today are the same as they were over 100 years ago, they are often much different. Japan was very much like Germany, essentially a very loosely affiliated set of states bound by geographical, linguistic, and cultural ties but often separated by bitter political and military rivalries. I doubt that even if someone had the foresight to force both sides to use the same standards they would have had the political capital to make it a reality. That sort of political capital didn't really exist until after the Russo-Japanese war towards the end of the Meiji era.

Well, how about the Reagan administration decision to leave the choice of cell transmission system up to the free market? I'm not saying there were *no* advantages to doing things that way, but net I don't think it produced such great results.

To know that, we'd have to know if the Japanese government got involved and locked in the choices before the market had a chance to correct it. After all, until the two systems met it didn't matter what frequencies they used.

Wait: I thought the free market solved all problems and never needed government intervention.

The Free Market *WOULD* solve all these problems, if it weren't for all that pesky government intervention.

There are few activities so strongly regulated anywhere as the electric power industry. I should know it, for the first five years of my career as an electronics engineer I worked for a power company.

The situation is so bad that when people say the power industry has been "deregulated" somewhere, like in California, for example, the industry is actually still more regulated than any other industry.

In the 1800's, Japan was just practicing eXtreme Engineering (XE) and employing the principle of YAGNI. It was deemed more important to electrify the country and then iterate the solution later, than it was to design for future expansion, let alone consider the risks of human life dependence upon the early choices.

Usually when a Japanese power plant is shut down, it has a serious pest control problem. The best solution is to send in the first cyberpunk-looking teenage kid you see with no help whatsoever. You don't need to pay them, they have to do it because the only way to get where they're headed is through the power plant.

The 50/60 Hz split posed a problem for air conditioner manufacturers in Japan. Their solution was frequency-converting air conditioners that would work on either 50 Hz or 60 Hz. When they were first being installed it was not noticed that their characteristics over their range of operating voltages were not the same as conventional air conditioners.

The problem became clear on a hot summer day in the late 1980's. TEPCO was importing power to the Tokyo area from nuclear plants a considerable distance away. Long distance transmission of electricity requires reactive power to maintain voltage at the receiving end. The frequency-converting air conditioners increased the need for reactive power in the Tokyo area.

In early afternoon, TEPCO ran out of reactive power and the voltage collapsed, causing a major blackout. It was the first major blackout that happened without some kind of event such as a lightning strike or a piece of equipment failing.

This earthquake/tsunami/meltdown/etc could be a Catastrotunity in that regard -- finally providing the impetus to modernize their grid. Laying new power lines should be far faster than building new power plants, and since we're talking high power/long distance and they'll need to match frequencies, I would expect that they'll be HVDC.

Another thing that they should be able to do faster than building new thermal power plants is to build power storage facilities to buffer day/night demand (battery storage, mi

They do, but they don't have the capacity to convert the amounts of power that the Kanto side suddenly needs. It's unfortunate that they didn't invest in more conversion capacity before this disaster, but then again, it probably would have been viewed as a waste of money, as few people could have imagined a power shortage of this scale before.

A few years ago the government began urging offices to keep their indoor temperatures at 28 degrees C (82 F) to save energy; there are doubts as to its efficacy as the increased sweat and lethargy bring greater water usage (more laundry) and lowered productivity.

I despised this program but could certainly endure it this year when there are so many people suffering from a lot more than an overheated working environment, but the silver lining is that when power capacity does finally get back up -- the Fukushima reactors were nearing end-of-life and new ones were already scheduled for 2013 -- regular folks might be able to work in air-conditioned offices again. After what we've been through, it sure will feel like a luxury.

it's changeable, but costly. Transformers are designed around the frequency of the power they handle. To standardize would require a lot of big expensive multimillion dollar monster transformers to be replaced. And if you do some research on the big scare of a nasty magnetic storm damaging transformers, they lay out the gory details of just how few of these can get manufactured a year.

Even if Japan had unlimited money and immediately ordered all the units they'd need, it would probably be at least 10 yea

Actually, the 50 Hz transformers would work just fine on 60 Hz (but they would be heavier than necessary). It's when you run a transformer on a lower-than-rated frequency that you need to derate its power-handling capacity.

Of course, there would be plenty of other problems with a frequency switch, especially changes in motor speeds. A whole lot of equipment would need to be replaced, or remotored and regeared. The logistics of switching half of Japan would dwarf that of Ontario's 1950s-era switch from 25 Hz

Where do you get that? I just did a search for HVDC link construction times, and ran into this [google.com], which cites the time to build the whole Cross-Sound Cable (CSC) project, which involved two terminals and a 40km submarine cable to transmit 330MW HVDC, at nine months. Sure as heck beats building a new nuclear power plant or whatnot.

I imagine the limiting factor will be global high-power thyristor production and stocks.

Transformers are effectively radio transceivers. The transmitter and receiver are so close together that energy is transmitted from one to the other with high efficiency. Every transformer is wound to work at a particular frequency so when talking about big power transformers you can't just change the frequency. Having said that a lot of consumer equipment would cope fairly well. Computers, light fittings, etc are pretty tolerant. Big electric motors in factories, not so.

Magic to you perhaps. To those who actually know anything about the subject, transformers take an AC source at a certain voltage and current, and generate an output of a different voltage and current AT THE SAME FREQUENCY.

There may be phase shifts, and there are always energy losses, but the frequency stays the same.

Most AC motors are frequency locked to the power source, hence will operate at different RPM at 50 Hz than at 60 Hz. If that is an issue in the application, then a motor change would be requ

Most of the power generation and distribution hardware on each side is just fine still. However, perhaps this will be the impetus for them to start a slow project of national standardization, migrating the dividing line a bit in one direction or the other every year.

According to Tepco's history, it is possible that you'll have to revise that statement in the future. I wouldn't want to rule out the possibility that greed and incompetence increased the consequences of what nature caused to these nuclear sites.

They keep on changing that, I was in Ibaraki prefecture when the quake happened and they first announced(but ended up not implementing) the blackouts they were from I think 6 am to 10 pm(keep in mind Japan doesn't do daylight savings time at all, so it gets dark relatively early).

At first I couldn't tell what you mean at all; then the staggering depths of this comment's cluelessness hit me. Japan was a feudal monarchy in the 1800's. There were no political parties then as known now. And now they have a bunch of political parties, not 'both', because it's a parliamentary system.

At first I couldn't tell what you mean at all; then the staggering depths of this comment's cluelessness hit me. Japan was a feudal monarchy in the 1800's. There were no political parties then as known now. And now they have a bunch of political parties, not 'both', because it's a parliamentary system.

At first I couldn't tell what you mean at all; then the staggering depths of this comment's cluelessness hit me. Parties are just abstract groups. Some parties are political, but they aren't even close to a thousandth of a percent of the full amount of parties.

Pfft, we don't need no national power grids! That's socialism! The free market will sort it out!

Actually the electric companies are typically for improved transfer capacity, as long as they're not paying too much for it. That allows them to sell the power some other place where prices are higher then turn around and demand higher prices locally too because reserves are low.

What they don't build is emergency capacity, because to a corporation they typically don't have to care about the consequences except to their bottom line. You saw it a lot in the financial crisis, if it's not profitable to lend mon

Uh. Smart meters don't fix shortages of electricity. All they do is cost the consumer more money when they're using it at peak. That's a retrograde punishment system. The solution is to build more power plants, or import more when you need it. If you live in Ontario and Quebec you already know this, since we sell most of our power to the US. Because Americans can't be bothered to build more power plants.

You've just described how supply and demand prevents shortages, while claiming that it doesn't prevent shortages.

Think about it this way. Would you use less electricity if it cost more? If electricity cost enough, wouldn't it lower demand for electricity below the level of supply?

A shortage exists only when demand exceeds supply, and when that happens, it means the price is too low. Smart meters bring real-time price information to consumers, which helps reduce demand for electricity during peak times, and that eliminates the shortage.

But you can only reduce your demand up to a point. After that, you will need to pay the electricity no matter the price. Is like trying to live without air conditioners in Phoenix's summer or heaters in nordic countries at winter. You don't have choice. Even so, for the Japanese market, the least significant component of demand will be household demand; industry, transport and commercial customers have a far higher demand of electricity. That's why with the current energy shortages are many train lines stop

The UK has off-peak electricity (white meters), while the regular-rate electricity goes through the standard meter (black meter). It usually means that people run their dish washers, washing machines and dryers in the early hours of the morning, and cook their evening meal after 6.00pm.

Smart meters in the UK let you know how many Kilowatts of electricity you are using at any moment, which encourages home-owners to switch off lights or to purchase dual motion-sensor/dimmer switches. One setting has the light